by Shirley Jump
He licked, he nibbled, he sucked, he teased, as he drew a torturous, slow map down her body, between her breasts, ending at her belly button, teasing where the water’s edge met his chin. He slipped her panties down to the bottom of the pool and she stepped out of them, not caring if she ever saw them again.
Then he came back up, holding his kisses just outside her lips. “We shouldn’t do this,” he murmured.
“No,” she said back. “We shouldn’t.”
“It could ruin everything.”
Or it could be so good. So very, very good. She pressed her mound against his erection. Barely anything separated them now, just the scrap of wet fabric of his boxers. She didn’t give a damn what was smart or stupid. She only knew that Mack lit a fire in her like no other man, and she wanted that fire quenched, wanted to have this aching need finally met.
“I need to know,” she whispered.
“What?” He moved to kiss her neck, suck on her earlobe, and she almost screamed.
“Everything.” Then Alex reached forward, grabbed Mack’s boxers, and brought them down, freeing his penis. She grabbed it in one hand, curling her grip tightly around his stiffness. The water provided natural lubrication and she slid her hand up and down, as Mack’s hand came up to cup her breast, his thumb teasing at the nipple, sending her into a sweet, incredible agony.
He groaned and leaned into her touch, kissing her deeply now, his tongue doing a wild dance with hers, so hot she was sure he’d explode in her palm, and she would climax beneath his hand. Then he released her breasts, both hands coming around to grasp her ass again. She let go of him, reaching for his shoulders as he hoisted her onto him and, finally, finally, plunged deep inside her.
Alex cried out and arched her back, her slick breasts sliding against his chest, as he rocked her up and down, a hot and sweet fire that drove her insane, sending her spiraling into a dizzying abyss. His hands grasped tighter, and she clenched around him, sliding back and forth faster and faster until finally everything in her body exploded in a dazzling fireworks of heart-stopping sensations. Mack called out her name, then came with her. She felt the last pulses of his climax before his hold on her eased and she opened her eyes.
“That was…incredible,” Mack said.
She nodded, her vocabulary pretty much gone right now.
“They didn’t have that in the brochure for the pool,” Mack said, grinning. “If they did, I bet they’d sell a lot more.”
She laughed. “Maybe I should put one in at my house.”
Mack trailed a finger down her cheek. “If you do, I’ll help you christen it.”
“Does that mean we’ll be doing this again?” she asked. Where were they going with this? She hadn’t thought about that before she’d gotten naked with Mack. Maybe she should have.
He dipped his head to kiss her neck. Desire rose within her, and she was oh so aware of her body against his, the way the water made everything so much more slippery and sexy.
“I already want to do this again.”
Alex pulled back and looked into Mack’s eyes. He didn’t want anything more than this. He didn’t want the picket fence life that she did.
But right now, she really didn’t give a damn.
“So do I,” Alex said, then kissed him.
Chapter Twenty-Four
No.
Alex stared at the stick.
Stared some more.
Shook it.
Stared again.
Walked out of the bathroom. Shut the door. Paced Mack’s bedroom three times, then opened the bathroom door slowly. The sunlight from the bedroom sliced across the bathroom, landing squarely on the sink and the long white stick. Illuminating the two pink stripes clearly.
Pregnant.
Impossible.
“Alex?” A knock on the bedroom door. “You okay?”
Mack. The last person she needed right now, and yet the very person she would have turned to—for anything but this. Especially after what had happened two nights ago. And last night. And early this morning.
Yeah, it’s all fun and games until someone gets nauseous, isn’t it?
Oh, God. What had she done? How could she have been this stupid?
“Alex?”
“I’m fine, Mack. Fine.”
Her life was falling apart and she was just fine. Thanks.
Just forty-eight hours ago, everything had been wonderful. Okay, a little messy, considering she was dating Steve and sleeping with Mack, but the sex part had been absolutely incredible. And now—this.
All those weeks of being nauseous, and she’d thought it was nothing. Apparently nothing had turned out to be a very big something. Or would be, by March.
Oh, God.
Alex strode over to the stick, picked it up, then yanked up the directions and read them three more times. Read them in Spanish, just to be sure there hadn’t been some moron on crack in the marketing department. But, no, in two languages, it said if there were two pink lines, “Congratulations! You’re pregnant!”
Exclamation points everywhere. Happy faces. Yippee skippy.
Alex crumpled up the directions and stuffed them into the bottom of Mack’s trash. Maybe the test was faulty. That’s what she got for buying the one on sale.
After they’d left the home improvement store at the end of another day of working on the house, she’d made Mack stop at a drugstore, telling him she hadn’t been able to kick that food poisoning from the Chinese food. She’d insisted on running in herself to buy some Pepto-Bismol—best-case scenario—and a pregnancy test: worst-case scenario.
Because the more she’d thought about it on the drive home, the more she’d begun to realize what one answer could explain everything. The raging hormones. The nausea. The growing exhaustion.
So she’d bought a two-pack, just in case she screwed up, considering this was the first one she’d ever used. Yeah, she’d just take it again. The first one was a dud.
But five minutes later, the second stick gave her the same happy, double–exclamation point answer.
Impossible.
Alex sank onto the cool marble floor and buried her head in her hands. The nausea that had been growing increasingly worse each day suddenly quadrupled. “Oh, God. Oh, God. What am I going to do?”
“Alex? Are you in there?”
“Go away, Mack.”
She totally didn’t need him right now.
“You don’t sound good. You sound sick.”
“I’m not sick.”
“You almost puked twice. On the ride home and in my kitchen. Not to mention you didn’t look so good earlier. That’s sick, Alex. Let me in. I don’t mind taking care of you. Just try not to puke on me. Friendship only goes so far before I have to pay somebody to be your friend.”
She tried to laugh. But it didn’t work. Nothing about this was funny. “Just leave me alone, Mack. I’ll be fine.”
In nine months.
“Are you naked?”
“No.”
“Then I’m coming in.” She heard the doorknob rattle and panicked, shoved the pregnancy tests deep into the trash, stuffing a thick wad of tissues on top of them. Not a moment too soon—because Mack opened the door and entered the bathroom. He bent down, his face a mask of concern. “Let me get you some flu medicine or a cold cloth or—”
Then he cut off the sentence as he took in the sight before him. Alex, curled against the wall. Clutching her stomach. Tears streaming down her face.
Mack opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. “Are you okay?”
She sniffled, tried to nod and ended up shaking her head. “Yeah.”
No.
“You look horrible.”
“I’m…sick.” She drew her knees up to her chest and laid her head over her arms. “I just want to go back to bed.”
Wake me up in nine months.
Without a word, Mack scooped her up, carried her out of the bathroom and deposited her on the bed. He pulled the thick comforter over her body an
d tucked it around her like she was a child. “You stay here. I’ll bring you some toast and flat soda. This isn’t exactly Mercy Hospital, so I don’t have much else to offer, sorry.”
Alex began to push up on her elbows. “Mack, I’m—” She cut herself off before she told him the truth, because she didn’t know what to tell him, not yet. “I’m not dying. I can get my own breakfast.”
“You never get sick, Alex. You can afford a day in bed, with me taking care of you. Besides, I don’t want to clean up after you all over my house.” He tossed her a teasing grin before he left the room.
Leaving Alex to absorb the news alone.
She ran a hand over her stomach. It was still as flat as it had been five minutes, five days before. If she hadn’t seen the evidence, she could believe nothing had changed. But something had. Something huge.
The one thing she, of all people, should have known better than to have happen. She’d tried the Depo shot for a while, and hadn’t liked the side effects, so while she’d been in the process of switching to the pill, the doctor had recommended a backup method. Which had been Edward’s department. Apparently he’d missed a raincoat or two. Or had a faulty one.
For a man who’d made it clear from the minute they’d met that he didn’t want children, he should have doubled up. But maybe, as with everything else that she was now seeing as Edward’s pattern of self-centeredness, he’d figured that should have been her job.
And forgot to tell her. Kind of like the forgetting the wife part. Bastard.
Alex slid her palm beneath her T-shirt and splayed her fingers against her skin. A life beat within her now, a life she could not quite believe existed.
And now she had to decide what to do about it.
“Room service,” Mack said, entering the room. He had a plate in one hand, a glass in the other.
Alex worked a smile to her face. “What, no tray? No flower?”
“No tip?” He handed her the plate.
“Touché.” She chuckled. “Really, Mack, I’m not an invalid. I can get up. There’s a ton of work to do at the house today—”
He put out a hand to cut her off. “You’re done there. I’m not letting a sick woman, who could puke at any moment, swing a sledgehammer.”
“This isn’t the Dark Ages. I can still work on the house.”
“No. You can do your job right here from bed, which doesn’t involve tools that can raise your blood pressure into dangerous levels or leave you completely exhausted at the end of the day. Work at home until you’re better. You need to take care of yourself, Alex. Let me handle the construction.”
“There’s too much work for one person.” She took a bite of toast.
“I own a construction company, remember? I do have resources.”
“You won’t take my check and you know I don’t want you to work on my house for free. I especially don’t want you to pay your guys to do the job out of your own pocket.” She eyed him. “There’s no way I’m going to let you do this without giving you anything in return. So tell me…what can I give you? Name your price, Mack Douglas. Anything at all.”
“I thought we worked that out the other night.” His voice was low and dark, his grin teasing, tempting.
“That wasn’t part of the bargain, either.”
“Then what was it, Alex?”
“A…distraction. One I really can’t afford, not right now.” Especially not now, but she wouldn’t tell him why. “We’ve got a house to fix and I’ve got a story to work on, and on top of all that, I’m…sick.” She still couldn’t get that word out. Sometime over the next nine months she’d have to say it, she figured. “Either way, Mack, I’m serious. I’m either working on that house or you’re taking that check I offered.”
His gaze darkened. “Then I’ll make it simple. Take care of me.”
For a split second, she thought he meant in a sexual way. The memory of the night in the pool stirred inside her. That exquisite, oh-my-God, do-it-again time in the water. She would repeat that willingly. And often.
And that was the problem. She had much bigger concerns right now, and sleeping with Mack would only make matters worse.
“Me, take care of you? I can barely take care of myself.” She laughed. “Come on, Mack. For five seconds, be serious.”
“No, I mean it. I have a housekeeper who comes in once a week and cleans up after me because I’m not exactly domestic. And didn’t you just bring home pizza the other night? That’s more than I can do.” He grinned.
“I can’t—”
He put a finger over her mouth. “That’s all I want, until you get better. Take care of you…so you can take care of me. Think of it as practice for when you get married and have a family of your own.”
Panic gripped Alex. She’d found out she was pregnant only a few minutes ago and already here was Mack, throwing out words that implied she might keep it.
He didn’t know, did he?
No. He couldn’t.
He, of everyone who knew her, should know she wasn’t suited to be a mother. Alex swung her feet over the bed and sat up. “No, Mack. You’ve been taking care of me almost all my life. I can’t keep letting you do that.”
“This time, I don’t think you have any choice,” Mack said, tucking the blanket around her. He pressed a palm to her forehead before he rose. “Mother Nature is dictating this one, Alex.”
Then he left the room, leaving her even more frustrated than she was five minutes earlier. And with a monkey wrench thrown into her life that she hadn’t asked for.
For once, Willow Clark had been right. Something that would change everything had just arrived on her doorstep, via a stork with a bad sense of humor.
Chapter Twenty-Five
It took only about five seconds for Mack’s crew to realize they should steer clear of him if they wanted to keep their jobs. His temper was shorter than a fuse on a stick of dynamite and twice as ready to blow. He buried himself in work, putting his back into the house, until he was exhausted and the entire crew had left for the day.
And the only thing left to do was go home to Alex.
Go home to her.
That was as foreign a concept to him as living on the moon. He didn’t do relationships. Didn’t do women living in his home. Hell, he didn’t even do sleepovers. But for over a week now, Alex had been living with him, and he’d been getting kind of used to the idea. That alone told him it was time to get her house finished up and get her out of his. Before he started getting bad ideas like thinking he could make this a permanent arrangement.
The trouble? Her house was so far from being done, it would take his crew the next three weeks of constant work to finish up. The place was a dump. Like one of those homes they featured on Flip This House just for kicks where the homeowner got sucked into a nightmare that dragged on and on in an ever-widening pile of debt and problems.
And the other problem? He wanted Alex.
He wanted her so much, he thought of nothing else but her all day. Every day.
And especially every time he looked at his pool. Especially that.
Either way, he wasn’t going to do anything about it. Alex was sick, with a summer flu or something. She wanted him to bring her chicken soup and crackers, with no side of hanky-panky.
Karma had had some serious good timing with that. Ever since that night in the pool, Mack and Alex had pretty much gotten into bed and not gotten out. He would have stayed there with her, too, if not for her getting sick. And only tangled himself in deeper in a relationship that wasn’t going to go beyond the bedroom.
Except…
Mack had started enjoying having her there. Being with Alex wasn’t like being with other women. It hadn’t been about the sex. It had been something more, something intangible.
He laughed. Wasn’t that what Alex had told him not long ago? That there was more than just sex?
And for the first time in a long time, Mack found himself wanting that more. The trouble was, he knew for a fact he wasn�
��t cut out to have it. Mack hammered a hail into a stud, slamming the metal on metal, driving the slim nail into the wood until it disappeared, then hitting the wood again, just for good measure, leaving a round dent with a basket weave print on the stud.
“Where’d you learn to hammer? The circus?”
Mack turned around at the sound of his father’s voice. “Dad. What are you doing here?”
“You invited me out, remember?” He held up a cooler. “I brought some refreshments.”
Mack grinned, then gestured toward a couple of overturned five-gallon buckets. “You read my mind.”
Roy handed his son a soda, then took one for himself. The two of them drank for a minute before talking. “Remind me again why you are working on this place. Because it’s a total piece of crap, from what I can see.”
“It’s for Alex.”
His father nodded, looked around. “It’s still a piece of crap.”
“I know.”
“She making you do it?”
“No.”
“You in love with her or something?”
“Hell, no. She’s a friend.”
His father harrumphed. “You help a friend install a garage door. Help a friend change out a trannie. You don’t help a friend rebuild the money pit from hell.”
Mack toyed with the flip tab to the can, crushing it in two before flinging it across the room. It bounced off the rim of a trash can and spiraled into the gray bucket. “She needs me. Needs some help.”
His father glanced sharply at him. “You’ve got it bad, Son.”
“No, I don’t. You know me. I don’t get serious about women. I learned my lesson.”
“Good idea.” His father sucked long and hard on the soda. “Women are nothing but trouble.”
“Yeah.” Mack took a long sip, too. They weren’t guys that exchanged a lot of words. At least, not about personal things. When he was talking to his father about laying tile or fixing a plumbing leak, they could go on for hours. But when it came to talking about anything resembling feelings, the two of them ran like animals from a fire.
